IGSTK 5.0 Now Available

On behalf of the Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) team, Kitware is pleased to announce the release of IGSTK 5.0. IGSTK is a high-level, component-based framework that provides a common functionality for image-guided surgery applications. The framework is a set of high-level components integrated with low-level open source software libraries and application programming interfaces (API) from hardware vendors.

This major release, driven by the team at Children’s National Medical Center, features support for additional tracking devices, a new example application, and a new version control workflow.

In this release, the IGSTK team added support for five new trackers: Certus optical Tracker, Polaris Classic, CamBar B2, easyTrack 500, and monocular tracking using ArUco. With support for the Certus optical Tracker, IGSTK now works with all optical and electromagnetic tracking systems from NDI. By adding support for Polaris Classic, an older model of NDI Polaris Tracker, IGSTK supports both the original and current communication APIs for the Polaris tracking systems.

The arsenal of tools compatible with IGSTK is extended through support for the CamBar B2 and easyTrack optical trackers. The CamBar B2 optical tracker is a compact passive optical tracking system available from AXIOS 3D Services, whereas the easyTrack 500 is an active optical tracking system available from Atracsys LLC. Lastly, support for monocular tracking of planar markers using the ArUco toolkit, available from the AVA research group at the University of Córdoba, transforms any computer with a webcam into a tracking system.

Leveraging these trackers, there is a new example application that can be used to log pose information from the NDI Polaris Classic, CamBar B2 and easyTrack500.

In addition to the trackers improvement, IGSTK moved to a Git workflow for version control. This new workflow enables the team to track every change that goes into IGSTK and maintain a stable repository.

To download the IGSTK 5.0 release, please visit the download page. You can access the build instructions on the IGSTK wiki.